© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Here is the transcript of the post 2023 British Grand Prix track interviews and press conference featuring Lewis Hamilton!
TRACK INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by David Coulthard)
Q: Lewis Hamilton, welcome to your 14th podium at the British Grand Prix. You talk about the power of the crowd here, you did it again. You came from what was obviously a difficult qualifying to deliver a brilliant podium here at Silverstone.
Lewis HAMILTON: Well, firstly, I didn’t do it, the crowd did it. Once again, Silverstone put on an amazing show, we’ve got the greatest crowd here. So big, big thank you to everyone for supporting. I felt the energy, I felt the support. This is the reason we got back up there. Also, I just want to say a big congratulations to Lando and to McLaren, where it was my family, where I first started, so to see them back up there, looking so strong. I mean, that thing was rapid through the high-speed corners. Wow. I couldn’t keep up, but we had a good little battle on the restart. The start wasn’t so great for me but the long run on the Medium was really great, so I think this is a good positive for us as a team, to know that we’re not that far away, that we’ve got to just keep on pushing, and we can catch those guys up front.
Q: We’re watching here behind us that battle you had with Lando. You got him up the inside of Brooklands and then, well, you just didn’t quite have the straightline speed as you went to Copse.
LH: Once he goes through Turn 13 or 14, or 15, he’s gone. So we had good performance in the lower speed – but we had a good little battle there – I just didn’t have the grunt on the straights. But I’m really happy: to start seventh and come third is a mega, mega job, so big Thank You to my team: great pitstops, great work all weekend, and I love this crowd.
Q: Well, Lewis, we should give the final word to you, to the crowd.
LH: It continues to be an honour for me to race and represent all of you. We’re going to continue to push, thank you for the support, and I hope you had a great day today. Thank you so much and God bless.
If you like SilverArrows.Net, consider supporting us by buying us a coffee!
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Now, there were a few anxious radio calls during the race from you. You said at one point ‘the cars pulling, it’s a bit weird’. That was one of them. And you also didn’t like the Soft tyre. Were any of these serious issues?
MV: No, they were not serious, but I like to report these things to the team. The wind was very, very bad. At one point, it was really unpredictable. So that’s what I reported.
Lewis HAMILTON: You know he’s serious when he puts the ‘F’ in front of it. Have you seen your videos?
MV: That was 2020! That was a great year. Yeah, that was a good one.
Q: Lewis, great job by you, your 14th British Grand Prix podium. How much did you enjoy being out there again?
LH: Well, firstly, congrats to Max and, and especially Lando, because it was great to see… it was a great battle we had but it’s really amazing to see the McLaren back up in competitive form. I think it’s been such a long time. So, and then for me, I really didn’t expect to be on the podium today. But when we go through all the different strategy options, this is the one you hope for, which is the Safety Car. I basically put on the Medium tyre in the hope and plan to just stay out on them until the very end, until the Safety Car potentially would come, and fortunately it did. So our a long run pace is really good and really grateful for the team for continuing to push. We do have a lot of work to do on our car to put ourselves in proper competitive form to fight the Red Bulls and now McLarens.
Q: You were eighth at the end of lap one. What were you thinking at that moment?
LH: I can’t tell you the actual words I was thinking, but it was a one of the worst opening laps that I’ve had for a while. So I think, ultimately, just trying to gather my thoughts and calm down and not be erratic, but I had a relatively decent start and then into Turn 3 just seemed to lock the rears for some reason. I think we had a tail wind into there and for me, I just kept snapping and went wide and the same thing happened and then the same into Turn 6 and Turn 7. It was very tricky on the first lap but then after that, just try to find my feet. And the Ferraris were pretty quick so it wasn’t easy to catch them and overtake but put us in a good position. But the most impressive part was at the end following him (Lando). Honestly, it was just… it was nice… it was amazing to watch how good his car was in high speed. And I know that we’ve got some work to do to catch up.
Q: Tell us more about that battle because at various points we saw you side by side going into Copse?
LH: Yeah, I threw it up the insight into Turn 7 in the hope that I can finally… this is the moment that I’m going to make it happen and I pressed the overtake button… Did you press the overtake button? So we’re both going down the road with the overtake but he had less drag so I guess he said they had a smaller wing and they just started pulling so I had to back out. But I was relatively quick in the first half of the lap and I think if you look at our qualifying laps, we were very, very close to Max all the way until… I think it’s until Turn 13 and then that’s where they pull all their time. So we’ve got some work to do to improve our high speed performance.
Q: Lewis, final one for me. do you think McLaren had a faster car than you this weekend?
LH: Yep. Yes, 100% and last week. But this is the first time in a long time and they deserved to have the performance they have, as I said, so we’ve got to do a better job. They’ve now done a better job than us and looking forward… What I would say is that this is one of the most exciting times I think we’ve seen in the sport where we’re finally starting to see the regs pull people closer. You’ve seen the Williams was up there with Albon. You’ve seen the McLarens now, the Astons so we have a lot of teams getting very, very close: small gaps within qualifying which is exactly what we need. So I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the year evolve.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Lewis, another question for you about the battle with Lando. You’ve been very complimentary about Lando’s race craft in the past. Seeing it up close and seeing that battle, how impressive is it to see Lando doing what he’s doing?
LH: Yeah, once again, he is very talented, naturally, as you can see and I think is great when you can have close battles like that and rely on the driver that you’re competing with to be fair and hard but fair and so there was never an element or a moment where we thought we were going to come together or anything like that. And then that’s what motor racing is all about. As he wanted to hold onto second, I wanted to get that second but it wasn’t meant to be today. So we just get our heads down and keep pushing and hopefully we’ll have some more battles moving forward.
Q: (Keith Collantine – Racefans.net) Lewis, we just had a chance to hear from Toto and he was saying that at the moment they sent you out of the pits with Soft tyres on your car when Lando had Hard tyres on his car, he was convinced “we’d eat up the McLarens”, but obviously it was a bit more difficult to get past. How confident were you that you were going to be able to get past Lando? And when did it become clear that it wasn’t possible?
LH: Yeah, I mean, just knowing what it’s like to be on the Hards on the restart at the end with someone on the Softs behind, I knew that it would be difficult. I hadn’t, obviously, had any running with the McLarens. So I had no idea how strong they were earlier on in the stint, or in the race. And it wasn’t until that moment that I started to see some of their strengths and see them get stronger and stronger over the laps. So I threw it up the inside and I tried to get past. But we have a little bit more drag down the straights and then through the high speed, as I said, as he mentioned, that’s where they were just murdering us. So difficult, but it was fun for those first few laps. I wish we could have stayed in that close battle for many more laps, but it wasn’t meant to be. I look forward to hopefully having some more of those battles in the future.
Q: (Phil Duncan PA) Lando, at the beginning of the week you were talking about watching Lewis in ’07 and ’08 and obviously you reiterated it again there. Obviously, you’ve been around for a few seasons, but is it still a bit of a pinch-yourself moment that you’re going up against Lewis at the British Grand Prix and you’re racing for second?
Lando NORRIS: What did you say?
LH: How old were you? Eight?
LN: I was seven. Yeah, you’re pretty old, mate! Yeah, well, I was seven years old. I’d never been to a race in Formula 1 and 2017 was my first ever Formula 1 race that I went to. And I was here with McLaren. Until then, I’d only ever watched it on TV. So those times were, yeah. I mean, that was it, 2007 and 2008, seeing the beautiful team teamwork of Lewis and Fernando (laughs) reminds me of all of my relationships, my team-mates. So yeah, that is genuinely still what made me want to become a racing driver today and to be sitting here and to be fighting and being a Formula One driver. I guess little did I know that Lewis would still be here 15 years later and still going strong. So fair play to him. It’s an honour to be able to race with these guys who have created history and been some of the best drivers ever that have come through Formula 1. So, it is special and I guess I want to be someone who can join in on those battles and be part of all of this and create some of my own history. So it’s an honour, a privilege, I guess, in many ways and exciting at the same time.
(Adam Dickinson – Total-Motorsport.com) Lewis, you seemed a bit more downbeat yesterday, but obviously came back to get the podium today. What do you think changed between then and now?
LH: Yeah, definitely yesterday was not the greatest feeling at the end. I think, ultimately, because we’d had a really bad race, obviously, in the previous week. And we knew we had an upgrade coming here, so we were all very hopeful of the step that we were going to hopefully try to take this weekend and bring us in closer and to our disappointment it didn’t take us that step, unfortunately, and for us to be sixth than seventh just, ultimately, wasn’t a great feeling. Just knowing how hard everyone’s worked, and everyone was feeling it in the team. But I think overnight just obviously you have to turn that negative feeling into a positive, which we often do and work on our positives, which is that we had good long run pace that showed on Friday, and just get your head down. Yeah, but after I went down to P9 at the start, I honestly didn’t feel too good either. But I had some fun trying to come back through. And hats off to the team for our strength on the race day. And as I said, I didn’t expect to be on the podium. So this is mega to be able to share with these guys.
Source: FIA.com
